In recent years, the use of online banking by commercial and retail customers has increased significantly. Online banking has been found to be much more desirable and efficient than traditional banking. Increasing emphasis is being directed to the use of electronic bank statements, checks, deposit slips and other documents, rather than the paper documents themselves. The use of these images can significantly reduce the expense, need and demand for the use of hard copy documents by customers.
There is, however, an element that is missing in the process. Customers who still use paper transactions along with their online banking are not able to effectively integrate those paper documents with their automated systems. Bank customers do not have the ability to keep imaged copies of bank statements, checks, deposit slips and other documents, on their own computers.
There are three common methods of making banking documents available to customers. First, the customer can receive the physical documents, checks, deposit slips, and other documents. The documents are then filed and are available for manual retrieval for viewing and copying. Customers may also scan the individual documents for placement in computer folders.
This method has many disadvantages. The bank must retain and mail the documents to the customer. This is a costly and inefficient process. The customer must physically store those documents, requiring the labor to do so and the space to accomplish this. Retrieval must be done manually, which is a tedious and costly process. Individual copies or scans must manually be made of the required documents. The documents must be returned to the file and properly archived. This is a very costly process due to associated labor, storage and operational inefficiencies.
An alternative to this system is sending copies of the documents, minimized in sheets, rather than sending the actual documents to the customer. From the customer standpoint, this system has the same drawbacks of maintaining the original documents. In addition, however, making copies for use by the customer is more difficult because of the decreased size and legibility of the copies of the document originals.
A second method involves banks providing CDs of the imaged documents for their customers. Single CDs are created for each customer and mailed. Customers must load the CD and viewer software onto their computers and register each CD before searching. Then customers must search each CD in order to view and use the images. Generally, each CD contains a maximum of one month of data. Therefore, databases must be searched individually and cross database searching is not possible.
The CD system is very cumbersome for the bank. Single CDs must be made for each customer. The CDs must be physically delivered to the customer by mail or courier. The system is generally only viable for large commercial customers making this type of image delivery unavailable for the majority of customers.
From the customer's standpoint, the information is not immediately available due to processing and mail time. Large customers may need the information as close to real time as possible in order to properly manage cash and lockbox situations. The CD system does not allow for this timely delivery.
Also, the use of CDs is inefficient. Even when the information from numerous CDs is loaded on the customer's computer, there is no ability to search across all information. The database on each CD represents only one month of bank images and must be searched individually.
The third method is to provide customers with online access to the images of their documents. In order to access the account information online, customers must log on to the bank Web site and enter the secure section. Then they can search, view and print out the documents individually. This system also has significant drawbacks.
If the server is unavailable, or customers do not have online access at the time the information is needed, online banking can be very frustrating. Since images must be accessed individually, there is no easy way to compile the imaged documents for a particular purpose. For example, it is difficult, if not impossible for a customer to create folders of vendor or supplier specific images. Customers, likewise, cannot feasibly create a folder of images for a given day or month. Even if the time were taken to manually organize all the desired images, the data could not be searched.
On the bank's side, customer information must be retained in the bank's online server for a significant period of time. Retrieval of specific information for a customer query after the information is removed from the online server is a costly process for the bank and the customer. The research process to find needed transactions not located on the banks server is very inefficient. The search process is time consuming, tedious and almost cost prohibitive for the bank and its customers.
A modification of this method is to allow customers online access to or download ability of PDF files of their documents. This has many drawbacks for the customer. The information is not indexed so even basic searches are difficult and cumbersome. Additionally, making copies of individual documents is generally impossible for most customers.
With the methods used currently, there is no effective way to allow customers to become paperless with regards to bank data. Previously, this technology has been unavailable.